Humming Your Nocturne on the Circle Line
by lillianmorgan
Summary: Spike is haunted by more than the weight or his soul or the ghost of Tara as he decides whether or not to return to Sunnydale. Set between Season 6 and 7.


**Humming Your Nocturne on the Circle Line**

He has a memory of riding the Circle Line soon after it opened new and fresh for the city to gasp at and choosing eenie meenie minie mo which stop to alight at and then following the most delectable treat so that once they reached the shadow of an alcove he could rip and roar.

Hiding the bodies was easier underground.

Now London is heaving under its own weight. The city is October-coloured weather and never ceases in its intermittent crying and bawling. He sits sullenly on underground trains observing people, revelling in their life, tormenting himself with what he cannot have.

Even in these newly remembered spaces, she exists in the gaps.

He wonders if he will encounter Drusilla. She always returned to where her heart felt home was, and now, with family dead, darkened and depraved, this would be the closest place to anticipation. He looks for her, but he doesn't. He fears her retribution, he wants to touch her again.

The demon chafes like a hair shirt, trapped with him. Muzzled like a wild dog, never to know the delight again of freedom.

He sees familiar faces and wonders if they were victims or past friends. He cannot discern the difference now, everyone seems harsh and cold and brutal. Just like the evening rain on his face.

Sometimes, during his sleep, she comes and he wonders why. Her soft words and tender caresses so alien to anything they expressed in Sunnydale. He knew she always possessed the infinite capacity for loving but why spend her time with an evil, disgusting thing? He wonders if they observed each other's existence back then. Now he feels her deep and fathomless. She is dazzling sweetness.

"Why aren't you with your love?" he whispers.

"She is healing. I will only cause her pain."

"And me?" He feels tentative, but needs, nonetheless, to know.

"You are special, William."

He glows, then, from feeling the incomparable sensation of being loved. And knows that nothing is real. It is always about what is deserved, and he must only fear that.

"Your hair is different," she chides, far too aware of the difference between gentle teasing and causing pain.

"I know," he says. "Don't feel much like doin' it up. Only brings back the bad."

She nods. "The Big Bad."

He laughs then but his chest is tight.

One night he silently paces the streets of the place he once called home. Back then he smelt horses pulling hansom cabs, flowers from the market-sellers, the clinging reminder of compressed humanity. Now it is filled with disused crisp packets, football stadia and children overflowing with piss. He climbs a small hill and sits by the place he made his mother's grave over one hundred years ago 'til he can sense the sunrise clipping at him. It will be the last time he visits her, of this he is certain, so he leaves a bunch of multi-coloured peonies and traces the fading edges of her name carved into her headstone. He murmurs a prayer and wonders if the demon is scalded.

A week later and she returns. "Why do you linger? You're only putting it off, you know."

He shakes his head with vehemence and declares, "What've I to go back to? This city can be my home once more."

She smiles that curious smile, that touches all aspects of her face yet still hides behind her hair. "You don't belong here. You made a promise to a lady."

He has no answer to the truth.

"If I leave, will you come with me?"

"When you return, you will find enough reminders of me. You can even visit my grave, maybe. I think Willow did a fine job."

"So you're sayin' I have to do this all on my lonesome?"

She smiles again. "You're never alone now are you? The weight of it presses and guides you. I know you can only choose wisely."

"Wisely as in returnin', you mean," he mutters with dejection.

"With hope," she counters.

And he makes up his mind to leave and return. He sends an apology to the city and disengages himself from its historical grip. A lullaby of a girl with sunshine in her hair calls him back.

He will never feel peace again.

_Finis_


End file.
